The Ghost and The Haunted Mansion (26 page)

“Over here,” I called.

Seymour’s flashlight moved closer. The chilly curtain of air still lingered, but now I could see my breath forming little condensation clouds in front of my face. I looked down and realized I was standing in the exact spot where I’d found Miss Todd’s corpse.

“The cold spot’s back,” I whispered.

“Great,” Seymour said.

The lamps in the room suddenly snapped on, and the cool air began to dissipate, along with all traces of the mysterious smoke. Seymour turned off his flashlight and scanned the living room.

“Maybe it’s over,” he said, setting the flashlight down on a table.

I took a deep breath. “Maybe.”

Then the lights went out again, and the room felt darker than a graveyard on a moonless night. Seymour must have lunged for the flashlight and missed because I heard the heavy object clatter to the floor and Seymour shout a curse. A few seconds later, the flashlight beam was on again—and shining right in my eyes!

“Ahhh! Watch it, Seymour! You did it again!”

Between the alcohol and the second flash of that Maglite, my night vision was now pretty much shot. So it was Seymour who observed the phenomenon first.

“The room’s filling up!” he cried.

“With what? I can’t see!”

“With some kind of ectoplasmic fog!”

I rubbed my eyes till the white spots faded, and finally saw the strange fog. It rolled like the odorless smoke, but it was much thicker. Like an early-morning mist, it felt cool and wet as it descended on us.

That’s when we saw it: the apparition.

Shimmering and semitransparent, the image of a corpulent middle-aged man drifted silently across the living room. The specter’s broad, jowly face appeared waxy; his longish black hair was swept back off his face; and his large, dark eyes were glassy. His clothes were old-fashioned—a three-piece, pinstriped banker’s suit with a handkerchief blooming from a breast pocket and a silver watch chain hanging from his bulging vest.

The spirit looked familiar for some reason, but I was in too much shock to place it. For a moment, Seymour and I stood transfixed. Finally, I called out.

“Hello! Can you hear me?”

But the specter didn’t answer. It simply continued on its path across the room, until it faded away. A few seconds later, the sobbing began again.

“That’s it!” Seymour cried. “We’re getting the hell out of here!” Then my mailman grabbed my arm, dragged me through the front doors, and delivered me to the purple dawn.

CHAPTER 19

I looked over to the left and saw ghosts . . . They looked like ghosts at any rate.

—“Brother Murder,” T. T. Flynn, December 2, 1939, issue of
Detective Fiction Weekly

 

 

 

“PEN? WHAT ARE you doing here?” The whispering voice slipped into my sleep but failed to rouse me. It was the sharp knocking against the glass that did it. “Pen! Wake up!”

My slumping body came to upright attention. By now, the sun was fully up, too, and glaring at me through the wide windshield. I squinted, glanced around, and realized I’d dozed off in the front seat of Seymour’s ice cream truck.

The last few hours had felt close to surreal. After fleeing the haunted mansion, Seymour and I had stood on the damp lawn in the murky light debating what to do. Since I’d left my keys in Miss Todd’s bedroom, he piled us into his only set of working wheels—his ice cream truck. We drove from Larchmont to Primrose and parked in front of Eddie Franzetti’s house, a modest three-bedroom ranch circa 1952, where he lived with his wife and kids.

“What’s wrong, Pen? Why are you here?” Eddie’s face now replaced the sun; his lean Italian features peered at me through the truck’s passenger-side window.

I rolled down the glass. “Morning, Eddie.” I stifled a yawn. “We’re here because—”

An explosive snort-snore interrupted me. I glanced across the seat. Seymour was still sleeping, his body sprawled behind the truck’s steering wheel. I popped my passenger door and stepped down onto the curb.

Eddie stood barefoot on the sidewalk. His blue jeans looked as if he’d pulled them on quickly since the top button was still undone. He wore a dress shirt, also unbuttoned and hanging half open. Dangling around his neck was an untied tie.

“I was getting ready for Sunday mass when my youngest asked me for an ice cream cone.”

He jerked his thumb over his shoulder and I noticed his littlest girl looking curiously at us from behind the house’s screen door. I smiled and waved. She waved back.

“How long have you two been out here?” Eddie asked.

I squinted at the cloudless sky. “What time is it?”

“Seven.”

“We had a scare a few hours ago. But it was so early, we didn’t want to disturb you or your family.”

“What was your scare? A burglar?”

I shook my head. “I spent last night with Seymour in Miss Todd’s mansion.”

Eddie’s big brown eyes appeared genuinely surprised. He glanced back into the truck at the snoring mailman in Incredible Hulk pajamas. “I didn’t know you two were more than friends. How long have you and Seymour been—”

“We’re not!” I cried—a little too loudly. I closed my eyes, took a breath. “I just had too much to drink at his wake for Miss Todd. I was in the master bedroom. He was in a guest room. Got it?”

“Oh, I see. Sorry. Guess I jumped to the wrong—”

“Anyway! We heard noises. Loud booms—well, technically, I was the only one who heard those—but we
both
heard the sobbing. We both felt a mysterious mist, a cold spot, and then we even saw—”

I paused and swallowed, gathered my nerves.

Eddie was staring at me with a perplexed expression. “Yeah? What did you see?”

“A fat man. We didn’t recognize him at first—we were both too shocked at the time. But on the drive over here, we remembered he was the man in the portrait over Miss Todd’s mantel. He was transparent, and he floated across her living room.”

Eddie shook his head, stared down at his bare feet.

“It
happened,
Eddie. I’m telling you it was real. Don’t say you don’t believe me.”

“Pen . . .” He paused. “I believe that
you
believe you experienced something. But you said it yourself: You had a lot to drink. And the Todd house
is
pretty creepy.”

I folded my arms, gritted my teeth. This was exactly why I hadn’t told a soul about Jack. The mixture of doubt and pity on Eddie’s face was almost as hard to take as Seymour “breaking it to me” why he wasn’t going to make a pass.

“Tell you what. I’ll tell my wife we’ll go to the later mass. Let me grab my gun belt. I’ll follow you two back to the house and check it out, okay?”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“It’s not like I don’t owe you, Pen. You’re the reason I got my promotion. I haven’t forgotten.”

I nodded and pointed at his naked feet. “Better not forget your shoes, either.”

 

EDDIE FOLLOWED US to the mansion, checked out the living room, the staircase, the bedrooms. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary. (Of course.) In the light of day, the house seemed to be nothing more than a quaint old Victorian filled with antiques and moth balls.

I was beginning to understand what Miss Todd had gone through. Like us, she obviously experienced the manifestations, even reported them to the police. But they didn’t believe her then any more than Eddie believed me now.

“Dr. Rubino’s explanation for the noises was dementia,” I said, pacing the foyer. “Chief Ciders’s explanation was a prankster or maybe even a killer. But neither man considered another possibility.”

Eddie put his hands on his lean hips. His QPD gun belt had been hastily buckled on over his jeans. He’d exchanged his Sunday-best dress shirt for a Franzetti Pizza T-shirt and laced a pair of scuffed Nikes onto his bare feet. Unfortunately for me, he hadn’t put on a new frame of mind.

“Pen, you’re not seriously claiming—”

“This mansion is actually haunted. That’s one mystery solved. There really
is
a ghost here.” I faced Eddie. “Tell me something. Miss Todd started reporting strange noises fairly recently, didn’t she?”

Eddie nodded. “Only a few weeks ago.”

“Nothing before that, right?”

Eddie nodded.

“Don’t you find that suspicious?”

“What?”

“An old Victorian
suddenly
starts showing supernatural activity—activity so obvious that the elderly owner who’s lived there for decades contacts the police about it. Activity that becomes so disturbing it scares her to death.”

Seymour came down the steps just then. He’d changed out of his Hulk pajamas and into an avocado-green knit polo over tailored beige shorts.

“I don’t believe it,” Eddie said, folding his arms. “Tarnish in a polo? Where’s the superhero T-shirt, Seymour?”

The mailman rolled his eyes. “This is Larchmont, Franzetti. Haven’t you ever heard of blending in to the neighborhood? Or to put it in your native-land lingo, ‘When in Rome’?”

Eddie pointed to Seymour’s suitcase. “Is that where you’re going? To see the pope about an exorcism?”

“No. I’m checking in to the Finch Inn.”

“What?” I said. “I thought you were calling your former housemate, asking him to put you up for a few nights.”

Seymour shook his head. “Gilman’s already convinced Hardy Miles to move in—his girlfriend threw him out a few weeks ago, and he’s been crashing with his sister and her husband. He couldn’t wait to get out of their basement. He’s moving his stuff in today. No room for me.”

“Give me a minute,” I said. “I’ll give you a ride over to Cranberry.”

“Thanks, Pen.”

I headed back upstairs, changed back into the rest of my party clothes from the night before, ran a brush through my hair, and grabbed my handbag, where Jack’s buffalo nickel had been safely stashed.

“We went to get Eddie.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“The tapes!” I ran to the cabinet, pulled out the hatbox, and stuffed all five cassettes into my bag. That was when I thought of one more thing I’d need.

Downstairs I asked Seymour to haul out that portrait he’d removed from the living room, the one of the fat man over the mantel. When he produced it, I pulled out my cell phone and took a digital photo.

Seymour locked up the house and the three of us headed into the driveway. Eddie stood beside me as I unlocked my car door. He pointed to Seymour’s parked ice cream truck.

“Weren’t you two worried about the brakes on that thing?”

“
Pen
was. Big-time,” Seymour said, waiting for me to pop the Saturn’s trunk. “She made me drive to your place at about five miles an hour.”

“
And
I made him stop every twenty feet, just to be sure.”

“Good.” Eddie nodded, folding his arms. “Because the sabotaged brakes of Seymour’s VW worry me a lot more than this alleged haunted house.”

“The brakes,” I said. “That’s right. You were going to stop by Ben Kesey’s garage.”

“I did. Ben had Seymour’s bus on a lift, showed me the damage. I took digital photos, picked up some prints under the vehicle, too.”

Seymour frowned. “But you’ll just get Ben’s greasy fingerprints, won’t you?”

“I took Ben’s prints so we can eliminate him, sent what I got to the state police. They’re analyzing them now. It’s a long shot but you never know. The undercarriage was unusually clean.”

Seymour nodded. “I clipped a coupon a few weeks ago for that new Auto Wash by the Sleepy-Time Motel: half-price engine and undercarriage steaming with the purchase of a hot wax.”

“Well, it’s a good thing. I’m pretty sure I got some prints that weren’t Ben’s. In the meantime, watch your back, Seymour. You be careful, too, Pen.”

I nodded. “I will.”

As Seymour stashed his suitcase in my trunk, I stepped closer to Eddie. “If you want my theory,” I told him quietly, “I think Miss Todd’s living sister has the most to gain if something happens to Seymour.”

“You know her name?”

I shook my head. “Emory Stoddard does. But he won’t divulge it. He says she wishes to remain anonymous and he’s under no legal obligation to reveal it at the moment. All I know is that she may be living in Newport under a married name.”

Eddie frowned, remained silent for a minute. “Let me see what I can find out.”

I thanked Eddie and slid behind the wheel of my Saturn. Seymour climbed in beside me. I noticed Eddie didn’t go back to his own car until we drove away. And yes, even though it made Seymour crazy, I braked the car every ten yards for the first half mile, just to be on the safe side.

I drove slowly after that, turning onto Dogwood from Larchmont. We didn’t say a word as we rolled under the shade trees, along the stone wall, and past the gates of the “Old Farm.” Finally, we left the site of the town’s graveyard and continued on the road to Cranberry.

I drove to the far end, just past the business district, and turned onto a long drive lined with century-old weeping willows. The Finches’ bed-and-breakfast stood at the end, its brick chimneys, bay windows, shingle-covered gables, and corner turret making for a much cheerier picture than the Todd mansion—to my relief.

Fiona and Barney had researched their Queen Anne thoroughly, even repainting the house in its original high-Victorian colors: reddish-brown on the main body’s clapboards, and a combination of olive green and old gold on the moldings and the spindlelike ornaments that served as a porch railing.

There were four floors of rooms, each with its own fireplace and most with breathtaking views of Quindicott Pond, a good-sized body of saltwater fed by a narrow, streamlike inlet that raced in and out with the nearby Atlantic’s tides.